Wild Thing
by JanineMNM
Summary: Anything could be brewing in bayou country, home of Fangtasia, Southern Louisiana's Number One Swamp Bar. With a boyfriend struggling with a listless "star" gator and a great grandfather in failing health, Sookie's hands are more than full. Trouble is, there's always something else. AH, AU.
1. Wild Thing

**I Write The Songs 2013** Contest Entry

**DISCLAIMER:** The Sookie Stackhouse series belongs to Charlaine Harris. The song "Wild Thing" was written by Chip Taylor, originally performed by the Wild Ones, and made famous by the Troggs. I've also used a few references to Karen Russell's short story, "Ava Wrestles the Alligator," and/or to her book, _Swamplandia_. And finally, I owe a nod to the History Channel's _Swamp People_. This is a fictional story. I'm only borrowing and playing with characters and ideas, not profiting from this story.

**A ****big thanks to nonto94** for beta-ing this story, especially since I asked her at the last minute. ;) **And thanks to PMR** for giving this story a look-see when I was first working on it, way back when. ;)

**Please note** this chapter is the first of four, to be continued after the contest. All-human. Alternate universe.

**Links **to sources are on my profile page.

* * *

I first met my boyfriend Eric Northman when he found me sneaking outside his bar, after hours, trying to feed a piece of rotten meat to his "star" attraction, _Bruce_, a bull gator over fourteen feet long. I'd never met an alligator that hadn't liked my special beef melt: expired sirloin donated by my boss, Sam Merlotte, doused with the secret sauce his cook Lafayette steeps his burgers in, and then left to rot for three days in a double bag on my back porch. And Bruce…well, he looked like he needed something special.

Eric caught me red-handed, which was to say that I'd not only tossed Bruce a sizeable piece of flesh, but also had first squeezed the juice into the water to tempt his appetite. It was dripping from my fingers.

"Hey, you! Bar's closed. Can't you read?" Eric barked at me, standing below the "Do not feed the alligators" sign.

"You got a problem with Bruce," I answered, facing him squarely.

"Bruce?" he sneered, his bare feet slapping the vanilla wood planks of "Alligator Alley." At around six-and-a-half feet, Eric loomed over me gorgeously, handsome in an intimidating way, following a whole train of men in my life who'd openly recoiled at my appearance, teased, ignored me, or worse, tried to save me. "You stink."

At least _he _spoke the truth.

There was a splash. Eric and I turned to gape at the froth-capped bayou, at a dollop of foam where Bruce had snapped. _Snapped._

"May I?" He was already grabbing at the bag.

"The trick is to work it up real good. You have something we could use to suspend it over the water? To see if he'll jump for it? Or some live bait?"

Later that evening, after a few more flirtations with rancid meat and a bull gator, Eric and I left a trail of clothes to the storage room—complete with a shower—and then to his office, flicking on lights along the way, peeling all the nocturnal corners of the place inside out. When I finally uncurled myself from Eric's arms under the mosquito drone of fluorescent lights, I had to unstick a plastic name plate from my butt cheek. _Lateral sagittal view of dorsal bronchi_,it read.

A leftover from other times.

Before Fangtasia, Southern Louisiana's Number One Swamp Bar, the building it occupied and its surrounding facilities had hosted LARC, the Louisiana Alligator Resource Center. During the day, sweaty bands of children, most of whom had grown up locally, would escape the re-heated outdoor stew to take out their bored, bayou-bound aggressions on the indoor educational displays. "Get down from there," teachers would scold, pulling upside down children from coin-operated observation viewers. With no quarters in their pockets, they'd return, only to aim the scopes on their teachers' panty-lined backsides. They'd wield the phone receivers—_Listen to the sounds of the bayou at night!—_as nunchucks and slap flattened palms on lighted panels—_Press here to see tidal erosion! _

"Watch this!" the children would shout, grabbing the knob on the Life Cycle of the American Alligator display. They'd whip the circular disc with its window viewer so frenetically that the flash of pictures and words swirled like a manic Ouija board. Spellbound, the children would read ghostly messages. "It says, 'Miss O'Fallon kicks puppies' and 'Ms. Pepper did it in the Classroom with the Mop' and 'There's a red apple in Red Ditch!'"

Gradually, the place had met its own stultifying death. Only the gator pits still simmered, as they always had.

"There was dust on the fake leaves in the raccoon display," Eric scoffed. He'd given the three-legged animal a quick death and then fed it to the gators. Make no mistake, though. Eric's motives hadn't been driven by kindness. Mostly, the raccoon hadn't fit with the business plan he and his partner Pam had worked out. Together, they'd come to one conclusion: tourists, alcohol, and alligators make for one lucrative combination.

The first thing they'd done was gut the interior of the main hall, a large, circular space walled in glass that overlooked the surrounding gator pits. A lower space, designated as _Hell, _offered an underwater view. "Lost Souls enter here," the sign above the wide, curving staircase read. They'd had an upstairs dance space, _Heaven_, complete with skylights and sweeping views. But when the space had drawn few people—tourists must not like to dance, he joked—he'd made more space for Lost Souls by hanging a "Hell Overflow" sign and furnishing it with the same red leather lounge chairs and low tables from below. The place had quickly developed a reputation, encouraged by eye-winking signs such as, "No biting or snapping on the premises," and "Mating season isn't HERE."

As Eric told me with a sly grin, "Nobody gets to hell without assistance."

vV\/vv\/Vv

"Aw, hell no," Lafayette first said of Sam's new girlfriend Callista, trailing a flowing skirt and a long dark mane of random half-snarls, here-and-there ropes of hair frayed at the ends. "One hundred percent natural," Sam boasted. I thought Callista smelled of coriander, lavender, and B.O. until Lafayette chidingly informed me that that particular fragrance was weed. Mixed with B.O..

Everywhere she went, she dragged a pot-bellied pig named Mickey, over 100 pounds, his barrel-shaped body supported on short little stumps trotting a quick step. He squealed and snorted just like you'd expect a pig would, which was notable for the fact that the pig was _inside, _wandering the bar, rooting and snorting up Chex Mix beneath Jane Bodehouse's stool_. _

"Tha'a pig?" she slurred.

I know what my gran would have said about the damn animal. She'd spent all of Jason's and my childhood trying to keep the great outdoors from infiltrating her clean home. "The good Lord's wild kingdom belongs outside, where He intended it to be," she'd said. This included rocks, moss, lizards, snakes, turtles, frogs, etc., as well as the cat and her own brother.

"You can go ahead and pet him," Sam urged in his proud Papa tone. "Callie's trained him to be real nice."

I wanted nothing less, but I thought I shouldn't be prejudiced—poor pig couldn't help Callista was his mama—and reached for his back. He jumped and snapped at my hand, slicing through the side of my thumb.

"Ow!"

"He get you?" Sam reached for my hand.

"Well, look at that." Callista leaned over to gawk at more than _today's_ injuries to my hand and arm. She met my eyes. "Ce n'est pas bon."

"You'd better go wash that so it doesn't get infected," Sam instructed.

"Right. I'll go do that tout de suite."

Callista had bent to to pick up the pig's leash, attached to him by a harness. She gave it a perfunctory tug. "Bad Mickey. No biting!" He strained against her, rooting for more Chex Mix.

I thought after that incident, Sam would ban Mickey from the bar, but at best he kept him in his office, where he'd occasionally chew on something like a box of file folders, last month's invoices, or the leg of Sam's desk. I took to wondering whether my purse stashed in his bottom drawer would be safe. It set the other servers on edge, too, like Arlene Fowler, who'd begun obsessing whether she'd lose her job over health code violations that would close the joint. "I got soccer uniforms and a family Y membership to pay for. What in the devil is he _thinking_?"

"_Thinking?" _Lafayette would snigger. "Ain't nobody doing any _thinking." _And that, inevitably, would set Lafayette on a chortled string of "Calla-bunnngaaas!" It was the shout we'd heard from Sam's trailer one night as a group of us were leaving the bar. Lafayette took it up as a rallying cry, of sort. Cooped up in the kitchen, he bounced in rubber soles on sticky anti-fatigue floor mats, a ball looking for a game. "What'd she do _this_ time?" he'd hound us, when one of us flounced into the kitchen. "Lafayette, you need to get out more," Dawn chided.

I tried to keep an open mind about Callista—really, I did—but I struggled more and more as Sam got increasingly stuck on one track and Callista got ever bolder and more secure. One day she grilled me about Eric's newly instituted and wildly popular Live Chicken Thursdays. "How big of a chicken does he use? How does he suspend them over the gator pit? How high? Do the chickens cause a big fuss? How long until the gators jump? Do they take the whole chicken at once? How does the crowd react? Did he ever try any larger bait, like a goat?" For such a gruesome topic, the questions came out weirdly smooth and flowing, like dreamy sex, her eyes liquid and lush.

Later, I caught her hanging out with a table of college kids who were bordering on sloppy drunk, pushing the limits of our serving policy. I knew exactly what they were doing, all of their body positions oriented in my direction, the expressions on their faces an exaggerated mimic of my own lopsided smile.

"They're making fun, Sam."

"What? Who is? You need me to take care of somebody?"

"Yeah. Callista. She's been sitting there with them the whole time, watching me." I'd had plenty of practice at controlling my reaction to rudeness, but even I had limits.

"Callie? You sure you're not being, you know…oversensitive?" His eyes flickered across the scar that made one side of my face droop.

I straightened my apron with a harsh tug and stalked off, didn't even dignify him with an answer.

Sam avoided me, which said to me that he was feeling guilty, until finally he offered, "Oh, hey, listen. I know she hasn't been very nice to you." I considered that comment only half an apology.

vV\/vv\/Vv

It takes a certain kind of person to make it in the swamps of southern Louisiana.

A lot of folks I knew had grown up in Bon Temps, lived off the swamp, either directly or indirectly, the way their daddy and mama had done, and their daddy and mama before that. Back and back and back. "Ain't no other place on this earth like it, but it's a tough life. You gotta work for it. Can't give up. It's out there. You just got to go out there and get it. Ain't nobody else gonna do it for you."

Folks adored their swamp, even as they weathered all of its challenges. Beat them. Conquered the elements and every goddamn thing thrown at them, from hurricanes and oil spills to heart attacks and bad backs to termites and invasive mold.

Until they didn't. Swampers are tough, but everyone has his breaking point.

But Eric...Eric was different. As a transplant, he'd arrived in southern Louisiana gamely enough, much the way someone might spend a Sunday afternoon: "Oh, why not take a drive out to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard?" or "I think I'll head outside now and wash the car" or "I ought to run to the store to buy lunch meat for next week's sandwiches."

True, he'd done his homework, researching business trends and developing a plan to make the change from science center to bar successful. He'd hired people to do the work for him that he hadn't known how to do. And true, he'd never cotton to defeat. But if his bar ever stopped making money for him—or if he had a better opportunity—he'd leave it in a heartbeat. Move on to his next venture.

It was one of the things I liked about Eric. Around him, I could relax the tension in my scalp and face. When everything I'd known in my twenty-seven years of life didn't _have_ to matter so much, holding on by the scrape of fingernail made less sense. And funnily enough, that attitude just made it easier to get a better grip.

He did his part, too, as a steward of the swamp. He maintained Fangtasia in a way that did not jeopardize local fishing. He sponsored a Little League team and sent his day man, Bobby Burnham, on initiatives to clear channels of roseau canes. He donated heavily to keep the Asian carp, nutria, and water hyacinths under control. He ran a promotion to get the Dixie Brewing Company back to New Orleans, post Katrina. And then there were the Bad Ass hot sauce competitions, the reigning queen of which was a tough, stern woman known as Ms. Thalia.

Still, he made a lot of swampers mildly uneasy, mostly about the obvious things, like his standoffish attitude and the fact that he hadn't grown up on the bayou or even in any one particular place. People didn't know how to peg him.

"I've been around," Eric had answered me vaguely when I'd asked where he was from. Oh, he had stories—plenty of stories—just not any from a single place he called home.

Jane Bodehouse, perpetually too far gone to pick up on any clues, had wrapped her arms around the "handsome devil" one afternoon, tousled his long blond hair, and announced he was "just a Bayou Baby after all." The bar had looked askance at Eric's stiff posture and barely disguised scorn before conversations had rushed to playful ribbing over who makes the best turtle sauce piquante and could-they-please-have-another-pitcher-of-beer.

But it was Ms. Selah Pumphrey, real estate agent, who might have been the first swamper to butt up against Eric's way when she'd first taken him and Pam on a tour of her LARC property listing. I can well imagine this scene: Pam in pristine linen pants and a sweater set, Eric in his leather boots, not the muck around kind. Selah must have fallen all over herself escorting them along the planked walkways, giddy with joy that she was finally associating herself with city folk, civilized people who knew about the world beyond the swamp: fine French restaurants, the opera, and fashion that could not be purchased from either Wal-Mart or a sporting goods supply shop. She'd made the mistake of assuming they weren't interested in venturing into the wilder regions of the property, to see a large tract of land on the western edge accessible only by boat.

Eric had never owned a boat and had no intention of ever setting foot in one, but to hear him speak of it, that's where Pam had bit hard. She'd rolled up her linen pants and pulled a folded pair of waders, in Swiss dot, from her handbag. Selah had had no choice but to join her, shoving the boat free.

"You'll come along, Mr. Northman, won't you?"

"Pam will go."

"Surely you don't want to have to wait for us," she'd persisted.

But Eric had already wandered off, trying to get a good feel for the feasibility of fencing an entryway to keep drunken customers contained, which had left Selah with Pam in the mud.

"Look at us! Liberate a woman and you liberate a man," she'd marveled, with more than a touch of wryness.

Pam—bless her—hadn't appreciated Selah's spin on the world. To hear Pam speak of it, once they'd gotten out onto the water, she'd managed to take over captaining the boat. She'd shrugged. "I might have churned up the water a little, to try to get a feel for the carp."

The Asian carp is an invasive fish that has taken over the waterways. Funny thing about carp is that when you start churning up the water, they jump. And they're big, menacing suckers that'll arc right in the path of your boat, knock you flat out if you're not watching. Nearly every swamper has a story. Concussions. Bruises. Cuts. Even broken bones. Hoyt, Jason, and Rene had come into the bar for pitchers of beer one time after poor Hoyt had gotten nailed. "Right in the balls," had been their refrain that evening.

I was sure the carp had mattered little to Pam and Eric for their purposes of opening a bar. But of course Selah hadn't known that, and had tried to wrangle control of her boat, which had only made Pam churn up more carp. When they'd finally returned, Eric said, a twenty-pound carp had been flopping in the bottom of the boat.

"Why, I never saw anyone catch a carp with her bare hands," Selah had said.

Pam was fiercely brave. I was glad to have her on my team of wild swamp women who (in Selah's words) had only barely outgrown their grass skirts. I heard her speak of it months later, when Bill paraded her into Merlotte's. Tipsy from wine, she huddled with him in a booth, giggling with him about the depravity of local-yocals. Maybe deep down she was jealous. Maybe her own orgasms never registered above a composed "oh," which was a pity, really. A true friend would have taken her home and spared her the embarrassment. But Bill, tipsy himself, his breath a tickling curl of sour yeast, cornered me in the hallway.

"You're much better in bed, you know. World class." His expression was uncomfortably soft, limp with languid, but assured intent.

My stomach roiled; I pushed him away. "Don't ever bring her back in here."

"Or what, Sookie?"

"There's no _or what._" I scoffed. "Just don't do it." There was no need for drama. There'd be no turning of the cheek, or taking of an eye for an eye. Though I was sure if I had to, this native could kick ass.

No…no. On this matter, I was happy to be able to rise above both Bill and Selah. I channeled my energy in better ways, bringing extra oomph and creativity to the bedroom that night. Eric knew better than to ask.

vV\/vv\/Vv

Something else about Eric set him apart from other swampers: his favorite way of getting around was by helicopter.

That's how he picked me up for our first "date," surprising me by wedging his red helicopter in the clearing in front of my house. "Driveway looked too treacherous," he said.

Gran would have been scandalized. Not only did he send dirt and plant debris flying, swayed and parted her rose bushes, but also he didn't even make it to my front door. "You sit right there, young lady," she'd told me when one of my high school dates had honked his horn in the driveway.

At least Eric cut the engine and directed me away from the tail, still spinning.

And then Bill materialized. "Sookie, you all right?"

"Sure. Bill, this is Eric, the man who took over LARC and turned it into a swamp bar. Eric, this is Bill, my neighbor." _And ex-boyfriend_, a fact that Eric had already known.

"Fangtasia," Eric said, reaching out to shake Bill's extended hand.

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's Fangtasia now. Southern Louisiana's Number One Swamp Bar." He handed Bill a card.

"He kept Ginger and Bruce," I said to Bill.

"T-Rex," Eric corrected, referring to the gator by _his_ adopted name for him.

Bill's arched brow had puckered his forehead. "Yes, I recall they were your favorites."

Bill and I had been to LARC on a few dates. He reached into his shirt pocket and produced his own card, which he passed to Eric. "I work for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, heading up a research program on duck migration. Being new here, you might be surprised to find some seasonal troubles with air traffic control with our boom in duck population."

Bill had worked hard, with my help, to connect with locals and establish his duck database.

"Should I change?" I asked Eric, eyeing the big step into the helicopter and figuring how high my short, tight dress might hitch.

His fingers glanced my arm. "No. Definitely not." He nodded, indicating I should go ahead and climb in. I took off my heels and tucked them inside.

"Where did you log your flight training hours?" Bill asked, which gave me cover. It was a good thing I was wearing pretty underwear.

"Through the PFA."

"The PFA?"

"You never heard of them? The Phoenix Flyers of America?"

I gave Eric's arm an extra pinch as I hoisted myself and turned to sit. Bill's grim expression said _be careful and don't be late._ I looked down at Eric, his eyes level with my backside and thighs. _Good enough to eat, _he seemed to be thinking. Bill started talking, something that my ears heard but my head didn't. If I hadn't been so excited about going for a ride—I'd never even been in a plane—Eric and I might not have made it out of my front yard.

Bill receded from view even before Eric shot straight up into the sky, leaving my belly with my toes. I figured it was a sure thing we were both getting lucky that evening, though judging from the looks of the controls and instruments in such a tight space, I doubted we'd make it into the mile high club together. Then we tipped forward in our glass bubble, dangling above the bayou, our toes skimming tree tops.

"More, more!" I wanted to clap and shout like a fool, but I kept most of my poise, except for my huge, untempered grin. But that was okay; I shared most of my real grins with him.

vV\/vv\/Vv

Even my great grandfather, when he still had most of his wits, had a need from time to time to set a boat in the water.

"Come for a ride with me," he offered one deeply blue day. We'd just weathered another tropical storm, the kind that had claimed both my parents in one wet, lascivious gulp. After sheltering inside for rainy days on end, I happily took him up on the offer.

Fitting myself on the bench seat of his aluminum boat, I lay back, using a life preserver as a pillow. From this position, staring up at nothingness, I lost the edges of the waterway with its knobby boscoyos and overhanging limbs draped with moss. Great Grandfather crept stealthily, flirting with the engine of his boat, coaxing it to a quiet mutter. I stretched first one leg, then the other, and marveled at the brush of air so dry and light and brittle I might float away. My fingers and toes, the crook of my arm, behind my ear—clean and dry and new.

His face appeared in my field of view. He'd cut the engine and was gazing outward. Gradually, I became aware of another sound. A blip. Lots of blips.

I sat up.

We were floating in a sea of gaping mouths, bobbing at the surface: hundreds of catfish.

"Oh!" I cried out. "What's happening?" Here and there a tail thrashed.

He smiled. "The storm."

Clumps of his hair, normally smooth, had fallen in his face. "The storm blew down so much plant matter into the water, now it's rotting and stealing oxygen from the fish."

Panic rose. These fish were suffocating. Excruciatingly slowly. "What can we do?" I wanted to start scooping and transporting. Foolishly, I began shifting the contents of the boat and grabbing for a bucket.

He stopped me, placing his graceful artist's hand on my shoulder, as though reassuring me. "The alligator, he's one who learns and adapts."

_Dinosaurs, _hunters around here often call them. _Ancient beasts._ The old gators—fifty, sixty years old—are especially difficult to catch, so wise are they to the ways of hunting.

Great Grandfather saw the alligator as a foe worthy of his attentions. Of course, he didn't have to do the actual dirty work. Hides brought to him were ready to go. He spread them out on the table of his pristine workspace and stroked them—lovingly—before cutting them with his tools.

No doubt he'd done well for himself, bringing in designer prices for his creations. He'd embarrassed me one day when he'd strolled into the bar, dressed to the nines as usual. "Mr. Brigant" or "sir," everyone called him. I doubted they even knew his first name. He'd let it drop that one of his bags had fetched over $6000, an amount that had galled the entire bar.

But these catfish? Not worth his time. His smooth fingers stroked my shoulder.

I wanted to recoil at his touch; a quiet nudge inside stopped me. I'd worn a bikini top to catch up on my tan, but Great Grandfather was the one baring himself.

Not much later, after he'd gotten his diagnosis, I went over that outing with him. Had his disease stripped him of his control and dignity, let his dark side seep out? Or had it changed who he was? Made him a completely different person?

I'd never know and I decided it didn't matter. He couldn't control who he was now, and family was family. I'd be there for him. It was only a matter of time.

vV\/vv\/Vv

Eric called me one morning. "I have something to show you," he said.

I never passed up a chance to go flying with Eric, so I was ready long before he made his big, noisy entrance. "What's up?" I asked.

"You'll see," he said simply. Even with headsets on, talking was difficult.

The helicopter rose and pushed forward, leaving behind the glare of my tin roof, the gravel lot of Merlotte's, and the steeple of First Methodist Church. In only a short flight—just a skedaddle outside of town—we reached open wilderness. As we passed over it, the bayou unfolded, seemed to straighten-up for company, cutting neat waterways through cypress groves and marshes. Here and there, a tail got tucked in. A trick, for sure. Gators are lurkers, patient hunters that wait motionless and hidden—sometimes for hours—until prey passes nearby.

Then they lunge with startling speed.

Eric pointed ahead. At first I noticed nothing. Even when we came upon it, I saw only another body of water, circular, like a pond, about the size of a football field. He dropped, closely enough that I could see the churning brown water.

Churning?

Yes, churning.

Alive.

My mouth dropped open, forming a circle of surprise and awe.

As we watched, an edge of the "pond" collapsed, taking with it a cypress, which simply slid into the water as though its roots had melted. My grandpa Mitchell had shown me one time how loggers had harvested cypress trees from springboards notched into their trunks or even from pirogues, a dangerous and difficult job. But this tree was floating in minutes, its branches and leaves poking out like bits of garnish in a giant bubbling brew.

A sinkhole.

Right below us, the mealy core of the bayou had crumpled and let go of its fumes and creepy-crawlers, dank and colorless and other-worldly.

"If you get to hell, keep going," my gran had always said. But Eric and I hovered and flitted just out of reach of the belching mouth.

Frissons tingled up and down my spine.

I thought about the local fishermen coming in for a pitcher of beer at Merlotte's to celebrate, like when Alcide had brought in an extra big haul of shrimp or when Catfish Hennessey had shot a thirteen-and-a-half-footer. When they'd managed the beast, even if only for the day. "Now _that's_ what I'm talking about," they'd say.

We circled again, skirting the perimeter, almost as though corralling the water.

I took one last look at the stirring below us before I met Eric's gleaming eyes. Sparked by surprise and adventure and challenge, he wasn't unlike other swampers.

"No day's ever the same on the bayou," they're fond of saying. There would always be that moment—every alligator hunter knows it well—of having to reach into murky water to untangle a line, not knowing what they'd snagged. A rotten bit of wood? A limp, injured gator? Or an angry one, waiting for the right time to come up fighting? Gators can leap, propelled by powerful tails, five feet out of the water.

And if they catch you in their jaws…everyone's had close calls. Ms. Thalia, for instance, considered herself lucky to have lost _only _an arm, which was later pulled out of the gator's stomach and re-attached. She devoted months and months to a difficult and painful rehab. But there are no guarantees. Swampers take pride in hard work, even if it doesn't always pan out.

Eric nodded at me under the din and racket of the rotor and blades just above our heads. Something had passed between us, an understanding that we were on this hunt together, as swampers do: one to work the line and one to pull the trigger. Though neither of us knew what adventures lay in wait, below the murkiness. Goose pimples prickled my arms as he lifted us out of there, tilting crazily.

While somewhere below us, under cover, those dredged-up creatures were scattering for new grounds, only beginning to give chase.

* * *

**Thanks for reading! **


	2. Sinkhole

**Disclaimer: **The SVM/Sookie Stackhouse series belongs to Charlaine Harris. I'm only borrowing her characters, not profiting from this story.

Congrats to the winners of the 2013 IWTS Contest: Ooshka, FiniteAnarchy, LinBer93, Magsmacdonald, Belleviolette, and Merick

And thanks again to Nonto94 for beta-ing.

* * *

It wasn't long before I felt the tremors of the sinkhole.

"A gator got one of Terry's catahoulas last night," Sam informed me one afternoon without warning, before I even had time to stash my purse.

"Oh, no!"

"Yeah. He went out to his shed late at night to work, and the dog wandered off at some point. By the time Terry realized he was gone and called for him, the gator must have already got him."

"That's terrible!"

There were no other words for it as Sam and I stood there together, the news settling in. It was a horrible thing to happen to anyone, but worse for Terry. A Vietnam veteran who'd been plucked and twisted by the grubby fingers of war, Terry had personal demons that got the best of him time and again. Frankly, for both of our sakes, I tried to stay out of his way. He'd chat when he was in a good mood, most often sharing stories about the biggest love of his life, his dogs. Every now and then, when his internal stars aligned just so and the bar was empty, he'd say affectionately, "Sister…" dangling the sentence before hauling out a new box of napkins or shifting aside a stack of chairs for me.

"Maybe the dog's just missing?" I asked.

"No." Sam shook his head emphatically. "Terry showed me the fur in the yard. Damn close to his house."

Poor dog hadn't stood a chance, and I could guess how much Terry was beating himself up over it, blaming himself for not being more careful. He'd probably gotten caught up in a job and lost track of time. Had a few moments of mental peace, only to find...

I shuddered.

Sam rubbed his hands across the top of his head, seeming to have forgotten he'd recently gotten it cut short. "He's asking for you. That's good, right? At least he's not in a heap." Sam wasn't exaggerating.

"Anyone call Victor's office?"

"No. Hell, no." He looked appalled.

"I know, I know." I held up my hands.

"Can you imagine Terry letting strangers on his property? With guns?" Sam continued. "Not that Victor would actually _do_ anything for him."

"All right." I held up my hands again.

Most folks around here jumped to help out their neighbors. But Victor Madden, of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, was an ass, doling out nuisance alligator complaint numbers like they were golden tickets and stepping in only when it served his own purpose. He liked his power _that_ much.

I wanted to help Terry, but coming up with a plan would not be easy. Outside of hunting season, with no tags, I had no right to be hunting a gator, even with Terry's permission to be on his property. And maybe the gator was already long-gone, having passed through Terry's yard on his way from one body of water to another. That's what the bulls do during mating season: travel, looking for food and an accepting female. Usually it's the smaller ones getting booted out of their territory by a bigger bull.

"I'll give him a call. He's got a decent boat out there, right?"

"What?" Sam gave his extra short hair one more rub. "Yeah."

"That's something good. Last thing I want to do is tangle with a gator from a pirogue."

vV\/vv\/Vv

"He's struck again," Terry's voice rasped. At 6:44 the next morning.

"Not Annie!" She was Terry's one remaining catahoula.

He made a choked noise. "No. The thing dropped a mauled-up gator behind the house."

"Dead?"

"It ain't moving ever again."

"I'll be there," I said. "I'm on my way now."

After throwing on some old clothes, I grabbed my gear and a powdered doughnut. Coffee would have to wait until later.

Passing Arlene's trailer, I reached Terry's home by the parish road. His front porch was laden, so full of parts and stuff, overflow from his garage and shed, that it threatened to tip the whole thing forward, flat on its facade. Nothing was junk, anything a commodity, tradable for a needed item or service among people patching together a living and seeing to each others' needs.

"You can't find new parts for old models. Only the new models," Terry had complained one time. "And that don't make sense, 'cuz it's the old ones that bust, not the new ones."

He had a fair point. I wondered how much longer Gran's refrigerator would hold out, old enough that she'd still called it an icebox.

When I pulled into the rutted parking area at the front, I honked my horn to let him know I was there, and then headed straight to the back. Terry appeared at his window as I began scouting for the gator. Soon enough, I found him not too far from the woodpile, partially hidden by tall grass and weeds.

He was pale all over. A yellow gator.

Yellow gators are rare. Considered bad luck, too, by a lot of folks around here. Terry hadn't mentioned that part of his problem when he'd called. But _this_ particular gator had tangled with his own bad luck, in the form of something much larger than himself. He was missing an eye, a whole back leg, and a chunk of his tail. Portions of the armored plates on his back were squishy-soft, crushed to a pulp. The flies had found him—alighting, buzzing, alighting. He stank of rotted flesh and the swamp.

"I told you so," Terry said behind me.

I jumped, not having heard him leave his house. "That's for sure. Dead as a doornail. Yellow, too."

"Ain't no gator a good gator." Terry didn't meet my eyes, which was fine by me. Business was business, and for now, dead gator disposal was the only agenda item. Luckily, he was just a little thing, as far as gators go, though still plenty big.

"All right. Let me grab my gear and I'll…"

Terry started walking away, in no mood to have a hands-on experience. "Tools are in the shed. Take whatever you need."

"You got a pond that-a-way, through the woods?" Terry was forced to look back at me briefly.

"Yeah." He pointed with a floppy hand in the opposite direction. "You'll hit the bayou not too far the other way."

Which meant that Terry's house was in the middle of an alligator crossroads. I grabbed what was left of the gator's tail, clenched it under my arm, and started pulling toward the side of the house, near the trail that cut through a wooded section to the pond. He was small, only a couple hundred pounds, and no match for an established bull, but still a couple hundred pounds of dead weight.

I dropped the gator once I got around to the side, and then ran to my car to tug on my boots and grab my rifle, in case the live beast showed up. The rifle had been my grandfather's, or at least the man I had known as my grandfather for most of my life. Rusted and dinged, it nonetheless was sited-in well and did the job it was intended for. I carried it proudly in the bright pink alligator skin scabbard made by my great grandfather and left behind by my cousin Claudine.

I wished she were with me right now, dressed in her wrinkle-free, odor-repellent clothing—only _she_ could pull off outdoor wear so well—shaking her glossy dark hair. She'd given up on alligator hunting well before she'd died, but she wouldn't have hesitated to help me out now.

She would have known how to help Great Grandfather, too. A Lost Soul of a different kind.

But those worries were for another time and place. When dead alligator disposal wasn't on the agenda. Or illegal alligator hunting in Victor Madden's territory.

Or harvesting rotten gator meat. I was hacking a chunk from the tail when a passing delivery truck came to a lurching stop.

Duff McClure hopped out of the front seat. "Hol-y!" he exclaimed as he crossed the yard. "Whatcha got there, Sookie Stackhouse? You got yourself a yellow gator?"

_Crap. _

"Hey, Duff."

"You ever seen anything like that? Bad luck, ain't? Man, and it looks like somethin' got into it good. Had to have been another gator. A monster. Man! That gator is _crr-uushed. _Whatcha gonna do with it?"

"Oh, just gettin' it outta here, so's it don't stink to high heaven." After I chopped off some tail meat, I was going to bury the carcass to not attract any other critters, and then bait the secluded pond for the menacing gator. Since he seemed to have found the little gator pretty tasty last night, maybe he'd come back for another snack.

Duff's eyes flickered to my scarred hand holding the hatchet. "You need help? Heck, I'd even take him off your hands. That'll catch me some alligator gar."

I'd never heard of fishing for alligator gar using gator meat, but then again, everyone has his own favorite way. Jason even used a bow sometimes, so... I considered. If I shooed Duff away, he'd only gossip anyway. But if he helped out, became complicit, maybe he'd keep his mouth shut. Maybe. Terry ought to be okay with him—he knew Duff—so long as Duff wasn't carrying a rifle or snooping around too much.

And as for digging a hole fit for a gator, as cathartic as it might be…

I switched my hatchet to my other hand and stretched my fingers. "All right, sure. I got an extra pair of gloves in the car if you want them."

"Naw," he waved a hand. "I'll wash up at the Crawdad when I grab breakfast."

We set to work rolling the corpse in an old shower curtain from the shed, then lifting it into Duff's delivery truck. What a cargo he had this morning: dead gator and beer.

"I'll head straight home from here to drop him off," he assured me.

Then he accompanied me through the woods to hang a few bait lines around the secluded pond, where no one would likely notice. The place didn't look too promising, though. No trampled plants. No gator slide. Duff chattered, at odds with our task, gossiping about the shenanigans going on at the Kissing Post, the new local nightclub, his wife's latest pregnancy, and rumors about the sinkhole in the bayou south of Baton Rouge.

After we hung the last line, I broached the need for discretion.

"Hey, Duff, might be best if we keep this on the down-low, all right? What with Victor Madden being the way he is and all."

The pond held still, consenting, even as the lily pads worked their sneaky choke. Eventually this pond would be a suffocating field of them.

He nodded vigorously. "Sure, sure. I gotcha. No problem."

Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were being observed from the nooks and crannies of the pond, through shaded leaf peepholes, burrowed mud holes, and notched crawlspaces. Places where creatures go to hunker down.

"You know, because if he catches wind that we're after a monster…"

Duff's head was still bobbing. "Right. Of course. I know. Victor."

"Mm-hmm. Victor likes to have tight control over his territory. Nobody hunts unless he says so."

I thought I'd been extra clear. We trekked out the way we came in, shook grubby hands—laughingly apologizing to each other—and said goodbye. _Thanks. Have a good day. Yeah, what a morning. Best get going now._

But that yellow gator, unlucky after all, turned out to be too much for Duff to keep to himself.

vV\/vv\/Vv

"Claudette's gone." My great grandfather's shaking hand rose from his lap, hesitated, and then fell.

He just about broke my heart every time he realized his loss, pain and confusion fresh on his face. After many losses in his life, he remembered Claudette most, probably because she'd been with him nonstop for decades.

I pulled a bar stool closer to him and took his hand. "Yes, Claudette's gone," I answered simply, waiting to hear what he'd say next. Sometimes he'd move on from a particular idea just as quickly as he'd gotten there.

"She was…good." His eyes jumped, as though searching for the words midair. More and more these days, his ideas were somewhere _out there_, only half-formed when they managed to be spoken.

"Mm-hmm. Very smart. And she adored you. Always on your shoulder."

It was true. After Fintan, my biological grandfather, had died, his African Grey parrot hopped shoulders to spend over thirty years of her life perched atop Great Grandfather. From there, she oversaw the laying out of alligator hides, the cutting, and the sewing, a lot of it by hand.

Claudette could whistle and cackle, which she'd done freely, as if celebrating her good fortune at the top of the food chain. She was one to be reckoned with, for sure. Every now and then, she'd stop me in my tracks with an "I love you, dear," in my grandmother's voice.

Great Grandfather nodded and laughed, his attention sliding from his love for his pet to me. "Sookie," he said, squeezing my hand.

I squeezed him back.

He pointed at me. "You…"

The determined look that had enlivened his face with a surging idea suddenly drooped. His hand curled and fell to his lap again. Confusion flickered like someone was jiggling a loose wire. His clothes—standard black suit—were dusty and frayed. I wondered what had happened to the alligator vest he'd always worn.

"I'm glad you came to visit," I tried.

He smiled and looked around. "You work here."

"Yes. Claude dropped you off," I said.

At least, I assumed that was the case. From behind the bar, Sam gave me a nod and said, "About five minutes ago, right before you got here. Said he'd be quick."

"I'm sorry," I said to Sam. No use getting into a long conversation about it with him at the moment and adding to my great grandfather's confusion. Claude had gotten into a bad habit of dumping him when things got too inconvenient for him. No doubt it was tough taking care of my great grandfather, something Claude hadn't fully understood when he'd moved in with him, mooching off him, drawing down his bank account. And now with money so tight, there probably weren't a whole lot of options for caretaker support. Thank goodness for Claudine's nest egg.

"Sookie!" the bawdy voice of Mack Rattray called from the other side of the bar. "Heard you got yourself a yellow gator."

"Shitty luck," his wife Denise chimed in, laughing, as shouts scattered around the room. Already, the discussions were beginning over pitchers of beer.

"Ain't nothin' to be jokin' about," Rene Lenier admonished. He stepped closer to put his arm around me. "You ought to lay low for a while, don't you think? Not tempt anything."

"Thanks, Rene. Let me handle it, all right?"

"Just sayin'. Ain't nothing to be messin' with. Maybe there's somethin' to it. Yellow gator and all."

"Leviathan!" Grandfather burst out. He'd begun shifting in his seat, buttoning and unbuttoning his suit coat.

I put my hand on his arm and patted. "How about I get you something to eat? Would you like a steak?"

He hesitated with that searching look.

"I'm sorry we don't have any salmon," I said.

"You don't?"

"No, but Lafayette knows just how to cook your steak."

He nodded, still uncertain. "Y-yes, I'll have a steak."

I caught Sam's eye before ducking into the kitchen, bracing myself for a little confrontation with Lafayette. Great Grandfather had barged in here one afternoon to complain about the ruined piece of flesh on his plate.

"Can I get a steak, rare, no seasoning?"

Lafayette didn't even look up from the cheese slices he was separating, his frosted eyelids fluttering violet petals. "Aw, hell no. I ain't never cooked nothin' that man liked. I'd have to butcher the steer straight on the plate and send it out still mooing. And you…" he pointed his spatula at me, must have read the exasperation on my face, and stopped.

"Aw…" He shook his head, leaving his work space to pull out a paper-wrapped package. "Here I go…This is me doin' somethin' I know is gonna bring me trouble." The steak sizzled as it hit the grill. "Right there, that's the sound of it. I can hear it. I can see it. I can smell it. And you…" He pointed at me again. "Standing there lookin' all…stirred up. Stirrin' me up." He shook his head again. "Yellow gator."

"I'd help Terry again in a heartbeat."

"Mm-hmm. And Duff and his big-ass mouth? Would you do that again too?"

"You better flip that."

"Aw…hell."

"Bird Man!" Shouts and greetings drifted into the kitchen.

"You hear that?" Lafayette said. "There's your trouble comin' home to roost."

I peeked through the kitchen door, and sure enough, saw Bill approaching the bar, chatting it up with Dusty Kolinchek. With hard work, he'd earned the trust and affection of locals, winning them over to help with his research on duck population trends.

"I need a wing from every duck you shoot this season," he'd told hunters when he'd first ventured into our area. The envelopes he'd passed around instructed respondents 'to sever the least damaged wing as closely as possible to the body and then mail it in ASAP, not wrapped in anything to discourage decay.'"

People thought he was plum crazy, collecting dead wings. And truth be told, all those wings were a little creepy. Over the past few years, well over a thousand of them. But he'd been a friendly new neighbor who'd been kind at the time I needed it most, when I'd been grieving the fresh loss of my gran. I hadn't minded spending afternoons with him taking him around the waterways I knew well to hunting camps to introduce him to the locals. As our friendship had grown into something more, he'd given me attention of the sort I'd never had before.

Problem was, as it turned out, sometimes his interests ran in the direction of more worldly, educated women. Problem was, he'd never come to terms with his own inclination. And problem was, he still saw to it to butt his nose in business it didn't belong.

Lafayette put Grandfather's steak on a plate—without any garnishes or anything else, the way he liked it—and handed it to me.

"Thank you, Lafayette."

"Mm-hmm. Just make sure I don't see it again."

I scurried to serve it before it cooled. When I entered the bar area, Bill's eyes met mine meaningfully, to make it known he wanted to talk. But even he could see I had my hands full.

"Dearest One," Great Grandfather said, hitching my breath with his sweeping, dramatic voice, the one I hadn't heard in a long time. Alzheimer's Disease was terrible. Truly terrible.

"Thank you for the steak." And then, strangely enough, he stood, left his plate on the bar, and simply started walking away, determined and purposeful.

"Where are you going?"

"I know you'll follow me."

He headed straight for an empty booth at the back of the bar. He was so absorbed in getting there that he clipped Jeff Labeff's chair and drew the attention of several bar patrons.

"Crazy old coot," they muttered.

Oh, man, I was really stretching the limits of Sam's patience today.

I snagged Arlene's arm as I passed her and asked her to check my tables. When she rolled her eyes, I offered up another night of babysitting.

Great Grandfather had slid into a booth. As soon as I joined him, he said, "I need something from you." His thick white hair fell around his shoulders, framing a fine-lined face, so otherworldly beautiful now, when his eyes weren't hopping with confusion.

He crooked a finger, indicating I should lean forward. Hesitantly, I did, though apparently not far enough, as his hand grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me toward him. I couldn't help but flinch.

He smiled thinly, and then stroked my cheek and spoke so closely, his breath peppered my ear. "As you may know, my memory has begun to slip. I've become…forgetful."

"Yes," I answered simply, since he had more to say.

"It is my desire to leave this place."

"Claude will come and get you. I'll call him if you'd like."

"No. Claude needn't be involved. In fact, I'd prefer not."

He released me, leaned back, and watched, like he was waiting for something to happen. For a switch, I was the one floundering, while Great Grandfather appeared completely sane and fully functioning. Maddenly whole. If he could do it now, why not always?

My arm slapped on the table and shoved aside a set of utensils rolled in a napkin before stopping. He'd had moments of lucidity like this before, gone in the bat of an eye. Just thinking about it froze me in place, like I might disconnect that loose wire for once and for all by simply breathing.

I wanted to tell him all kinds of things in this little window of time. Maybe they'd sink in now, become a new bit of memory that stayed. Foolish of me, I knew, and anyway, my great grandfather seemed to have his own agenda at the moment.

"I can't leave here when I'm on shift," I tried. "And if you don't want Claude, well…" I supposed I could try calling Tara. Or maybe…. I cast a quick glance around the bar to look for another option.

"Sookie." He sounded disappointed. He waved his hand impatiently. "I want to leave here _for good._"

"For good..."

Suddenly I understood enough to know that I didn't want to understand, that he definitely wasn't talking about leaving Merlotte's. Or even checking into his private headspace forever after. I felt a bubble open up around us as the noises of Merlotte's receded.

"Y-you…" A lump caught in my throat. There was too much to say at once. One of these moments—maybe now—would be the last moment of having _him, _the man I'd known and who'd known me, with all of our shared past_._

"You know what I mean, Dearest One."

I'd heard every sound his mouth made, his lips smacking and curling around _Dearest One. _Creepy. Verging on humanity, but not quite there.

"Grandfather," I tried again as I blinked through a wash of tears. _We'll talk about it later, _I wanted to say, which only made me tear up more. _Later_ was a dicey proposition; there was only _now_.

"I do not wish to cause any trouble to my loved ones here."

My mouth gaped. "Trouble?" I repeated, incredulous. Given what he was asking, he had a different understanding of the word _trouble. _

"It'll only get worse," he answered. "I'll become…someone I don't want to be. And I know I'm not capable of doing it myself anymore. I waited too long."

I reached out to clasp my hands around his, a gesture that felt wholly inadequate. Things would surely get much worse. "I _love _you and I always will, no matter what happens, or…who you become."

"I know, and that's why I've come to you."

"What you're asking…" My throat closed, blocking me from getting out the terrible words. When I could finally swallow, I said instead, "I don't want you to…_suffer." _My voice cracked, and _suffer _clanged with far more power than I'd wanted to give it. I had to look away from him.

He patted my hand. "You understand," he said, with such brightness, I abruptly stiffened.

"I'm _trying _to understand." How much did _he_ understand? Could he possibly fathom how much he was asking of me? How could he come here to work and ask for my help like this, like he simply wanted me to stop by the Grab-It-Kwik for him and pick up a gallon of milk? Maybe he'd even planned to corner me when he knew I was busy just to escape any major conversation about it…

I stopped myself, ashamed; I was getting angry at a sick man whose brain was being whittled down to the stem by a disease he had no control over.

"Grandfather…" I had a sudden urge to call him Paw-Paw, though I didn't because I knew he'd hate it. "I won't leave you. This is a problem for _us _to figure out. Together."

He smiled and looked around. "Yes, together."

My heart sank as I began to suspect he'd already slipped away from our conversation. "Do you understand?"

He was still smiling. "Yes."

I leaned toward him, to try to hold his attention and keep him here. _Stay with me. _

"Hello," he said pleasantly.

"We were talking about you wanting to…leave," I pressed, knowing how desperate I sounded.

He looked around. "You work here."

I nodded. "Mm-hmm." It was all I could manage to say without crying out, feeling sadder and lonelier for losing him all over again, and worried about how I was going to help him, and mad too that he'd shouldered me with an impossible request. And yet I'd go back to him with fresh hope; he was _that_ tantalizing.

"Claudette's gone," he said, his eyes wide.

"Yes, I'm sorry." I stood under the weight of my new problems and waited for that old familiar numbness to wash over me. My feet began to move on auto-pilot. "Come with me. I have something for you."

We linked arms and made our way across the room to where his plate was waiting for him. He looked at it like he didn't know what it was.

"This steak is for you."

"Thank you."

"You can sit right here." I patted the bar stool.

He climbed up and simply looked at his plate.

"You may eat that if you'd like."

He nodded. His fingertips fumbled with the handles of his knife and fork. I realized he might not even be able to cut it. There were people watching us, with nods and murmurs. Jane Bodehouse actually got up from her stool to take the empty one next to him. She patted his arm and said too loudly, "'S okay. That happens to me too, from time to time, and I ain't even that old."

I grabbed his plate to say I was going to warm it up for him. Lafayette was perceptive enough to hold his tongue as he watched me cut it into small pieces. Halfway done, I realized this was no way to salvage his dignity.

The whole thing landed in the trash, uneaten. _He won't remember it anyway, _I thought, which gave a big tug to my conscience. Then again, maybe using his memory loss to his advantage was the best way to work with the situation. I just didn't know.

One thing I _did_ know was that Claude needed to hurry his sorry ass back here. I called his cell phone and left a message to that effect. When he showed up not five minutes later, I didn't have the energy to get into it with him—nor was work the place for it—though I did make arrangements to see Great Grandfather in two days, on my day off.

I kissed his cheek. "Claude is taking you home. I'll see you again soon. I will come visit you."

He nodded and shuffled out with Claude, looking decidedly older. I boogied to catch up on my tables, since I still needed to pay my bills. _And I might need to use Claudine's nest egg for medical care. No, no. Not gonna think about that._ I shoved everything out of my mind—Terry's problem gator, which everyone seemed to know about now, as well as Great Grandfather's request and his well-being—but unfortunately, other troubles kept cropping up. For starters, there was Bill, hopping from table to table as he greeted everyone and bumping into me more than once; he looked at me with clear intent every time.

And then Mrs. Quinn, the mother of another one of my ex-boyfriends came in, followed shortly by Callista, who settled herself right between Jane Bodehouse and Mrs. Quinn at the bar. Now _there_ was a real bad combination if I ever saw one. As much as I didn't feel like dealing with any of them, I made a quick call to John, in order to cut this one off at the knees.

I was behind the bar, catching up on some chores, when Bill finally cornered me.

"I heard of your troubles."

"Yeah? Which ones would those be?" I was in no mood.

Bill gave me a level stare. "You need me to throw Victor off?"

I hated his answer, which managed to say both that he knew I was doing something illegal _and_ that he had the power and connection I might need to get out of a jam.

"There's no need." I reached for the bin of rolled cutlery, which always seemed to be running low.

"Sweetheart," he said with pity in his voice. "Terry's dog? A mauled yellow gator? Duff McClure? Victor's bound to find out and put it all together."

"It was the right thing to do." I gritted my teeth. "And I had nothing to do with Duff. He was just there at…the wrong time."

"All right," he said, surprisingly agreeably. "But let's think about this. With word getting round about a yellow gator being mauled …"

I stopped him, annoyed he was pointing out the obvious. "I know. Victor takes care of Victor. He loves to step in when he can make a big splash."

"I wouldn't be surprised if he shows up one night on Terry's property, scouting. It would be too much for him to resist."

I stopped my motions, the stack of menus I'd laid on the bar only half sorted. "Terry's going through a bad patch. His dog…" I didn't need to explain how he'd come unglued by someone like Victor prowling around on his property, even if Victor was there to catch the gator that had killed his dog. _Victor, that snake in the grass…_

Bill nodded. "I'll see what I can do. I saw some signs of a big gator at Magnolia Creek, near the country club."

We were on the same page, then. "Right. Keep Victor distracted, away from Terry, with bigger, flashier causes."

But Bill had one more thing to say. "And no more gator hunting with Duff."

I nearly raised a stack of menus to smash over his head, but just then, John Quinn's voice arose from the bar. "No, Mom, come on, it's time to go." Jane watched with bemusement, having had her ass hauled out of here more than once by her son, Marvin. When he looked to me to mouth the words _thank you, _I gave him a little wave of acknowledgment and looked away. This kind of thing was exactly what I'd wanted to stay out of when I'd broken up with him.

"The swamp's not happy," Callista was saying loudly, to the beat of Jane's obliging, bobbing head. I wanted to smack Callista, too. "Spitting out a yellow gator. No telling what's coming next. And they say that sinkhole could go down hundreds of feet."

Mrs. Quinn resisted as John tugged on her. "Come on, Mom," he said, meeting my eyes. He sounded surprisingly limp for someone with such physical strength: muscles galore, along with an ability to fight. I hadn't needed to see it—the fighting, that is—to believe it. But _she_ was his weakness. His sister too.

They'd struggled through more than their fair share of terrible times. And I had no patience for them: Mrs. Quinn, John, and Frannie. They came as a package deal.

"You, of all people," Quinn had said when I'd abruptly cut my ties with him.

And _that_ had been the point. I _did _understand. Too much. But I couldn't help them; I didn't have the power to change anything. I'd only get dragged down with them. Call it cold. Selfish. Heartless. Quinn had.

Mrs. Quinn's voice rose, agitated, but her body had started moving toward the door.

"I have some time at the end of the week," Bill was saying. "We can take my skiff through the section of the bayou near Terry's house. Do some scouting. I know a spot about a half mile west where we can put her in."

"All right. Sure. Thanks."

Resisting Bill didn't even cross my mind again. I needed to save my energy for all of the problems that had been added to my hit list today. A helping hand from Bill, with his own LDWF connections and experience on the bayou, sounded like just the thing for crossing off multiple items. I even started to relax under the lightened load.

Things weren't so bad. I'd handled worse and had come out all right. Swamp water was in my blood, after all.

It was in that frame of mind, as the night drew to a close, that I let my biggest problem enter my thoughts, the one I had yet to put in my own words. _My great grandfather wanted me to help him die._

I went on autopilot—wiping down tables, refilling salt-and-pepper shakers and ketchup bottles, collecting and discarding daily special menus—as my great grandfather's request started to take form in my mind. No, of course I didn't know what I was going to do or how I could help him. I was only just starting to size up this challenge.

But it was okay. One way or another, I could figure this out.


	3. Churning

**Disclaimer: **The SVM/Sookie Stackhouse series belongs to Charlaine Harris. I'm only borrowing her characters, not profiting from this story.

* * *

Ginger was _stark raving mad_.

At least, that's what you might believe if you listened to Long Shadow, Eric's combo bartender/alligator wrestler. "Whack job," he said of her. "Crazy bitch is a fucking menace."

I tried not to pay too much attention to the sullen bartender/wrestler, who had a complaint for every season. He didn't like the new napkins, which left soggy bits clinging to his glasses, rolled his eyes every time out-of-towners called the gators "crocodiles," and threw away linty pocket change a drunken person left for his tip. All of these problems were apparently just as offensive as the tourists who called him Chief Dundee or war-whooped after one of his shows.

No, I didn't blame him for being mad about the galling racial slurs, but Ginger didn't deserve the brunt of it simply because she wasn't…typical.

"What a shame," Bill had said with pity in his voice when he'd first spotted her, back in her LARC days, with her unusual hide, speckled and streaked vibrantly red. "The things that people do. Can you imagine…using her as a graffiti board like that?"

"You think someone marked her on purpose?" I'd asked.

"Oh, yes. One time I saw a gator spray-painted with the words 'Bite Me.' Or they toss dye on the gators to protect them from hunters." He shook his head. "It's a foolish, misguided effort. Marking them doesn't in any way keep them safe from baited lines. _And _it puts them at risk of being attacked by another gator."

He'd nodded confidently, as though he'd gotten the inside scoop on Ginger's past. His smugness bugged the hell out of me. "Out of all the possible stories for her_, that's_ the best you can do?" I'd wanted to say, but kept to myself.

I'd never know Ginger's truth either-and I wished she could tell me-but still I spent an embarrassing amount of time coming up with better backstories for her. Like maybe she'd made her nest in a rusted drainage pipe. Or she'd gotten captured and trapped in a basement by three bank robbers who used her to guard their booty. _She lurked their quietly, gaining strength and waiting for just the right moment. And then finally one day, she made her move among the stacks of money, causing a big scene by exploding a couple of inactivated dye packs. (The kind they use to deter bank heists.) Dripping red and ghastly-looking, she scared off the bad guys with her thrashing and growling and escaped into the wild. _

Or, I mean...something like that.

Of course none of the stories had a truly happy ending, because eventually she'd landed at LARC. Now she was in a holding tank, where Eric had had to put her for the "trouble" she'd caused. Or as Long Shadow liked to point out, for the trouble she had caused _him,_ the one who'd had to do the actual capturing and transferring. He was one disgruntled employee.

"She was fine and good while you thought she was still performing," I pointed out to both Eric and Long Shadow.

Long Shadow snorted. "When? When she was swimming around the tank with her fucking mermaid show? I knew it then—we shoulda pulled her."

_Mermaid Show_ wasn't such a bad name for Ginger's behavior, and I kinda liked it. She'd become quite a stand-out among the other gators in the tank, silently lurking just at the surface of the water, all eyes and nostrils. A whole pool of them, floating buttons and baubles.

But Ginger…she'd started showing herself. More than once, I'd seen her full length weaving among the dark bodies in the tank, her curvaceous tail winding her forward. She was eight-feet long and 300 pounds, and the space was tight, but still, she managed to move playfully, if you can think of a gator that way. Here and there, without any obvious reason, she'd dip and bob. She'd made for a great show. Bar patrons bored with the brooding type had loved Ginger's wild, outlandish performance.

It all would have been fine and good except for one thing: Ginger seemed to have forgotten what was edible and what wasn't. She preyed on any garbage floating in her tank, like sticks, water lilies, a clump of tissues, a water bottle, and somebody's baseball hat, to name a few. Everything she treated with her same level of energy: chunks of rotten meat and cardboard Fangtasia beer coasters, tossed like Frisbees, all got devoured enthusiastically. She had plenty of mean-spirited "fans" who made a sport of her confusion.

Eric didn't care so much what her story was, but he'd had to move her away from the public eye because he couldn't keep his patrons from mucking up one of his main tanks. Also, she'd attacked a bull. Now she was costing him money in the "holding tank," which was more like solitary confinement.

"She's lonely in there," I told him.

Long Shadow scoffed at me. "Alligators don't make _friends. _Did you see the chunk she took out of Chow?"

Eric eyed me coolly, challenging me.

"Why not try putting her in with T-Rex?" I suggested, choosing on this occasion to refer to _Bruce_ by Eric's preferred name for him.

Long Shadow huffed. "So now you want me to wrangle her out of that holding tank and then stand by while we set her loose on our biggest gator? She won't win that battle, Blondie, and I'm not going after her when she gets in over her head."

I nearly laughed, given how lackadaisical and unconvincing their star gator had been. He'd had as much vim and vigor as a sunken cypress log. Long Shadow's biggest flaw was his stupidity, and this time, I suspected he was also being lazy; he had no trouble wrestling any gator when it was part of a performance that showcased _him_. Unless maybe the _real_ problem here was that he didn't like being upstaged by a so-called crazy bitch gator.

So I spoke directly to Eric. "I bet Chow tried to mount her. Females usually won't accept a bull smaller in size, and Ginger was the biggest one in that other tank." She had some heft to her, topping out on the scale for female gators. Crazy or not, she could hold her own; I was sure of it.

Long Shadow started to speak, but I cut him off. "And who knows, she might tweak T's interest. You know what that means." A bull gator who wants to mate makes a big scene with lots of bellowing and head thrashing. "What with the size of him, he'll look fierce." I let that sink in for a moment before I added, "Plus T's tank already has a better fence for keeping out the trash."

Eric looked to Long Shadow, whose tight grimace told me that he knew the deal was done. And that I hadn't made a new friend.

"She's dog food," he finally said, stepping closer to me. "Woof-woof." This last bit he said too close to my face, with an expression I could only describe as "knowing."

I had a whole lot of choice words I wanted to say to that asshole, but I kept my mouth shut since I figured I'd already won this particular battle. He stared me down—I didn't flinch—until Eric finally told him to "get back to work." He stalked off, leaving Eric, me, and one colorful mermaid-gator that looked woefully cramped in her solitary tank. No room for flips and turns. I wished I had some rancid chicken for her.

"Soon," I promised her. "You'll have more space to play."

What I didn't say out loud, to her or Eric, was that once I'd seen a program on the Discovery Channel about alligators that mate for life. Because maybe that's the stuff of romance. Of happily-ever-after fairy tale endings.

vV\/vv\/Vv

My great grandfather was shirtless, sunning himself in a grassy patch off his back porch, when I arrived at his house.

"How you doing, Grandfather?" I called out to him. "It's Sookie."

He turned and stood as though presenting himself for inspection, with his pants unzipped and his boxers gaping wide. His face was blank.

"Hello," I said again, forcing myself to not react strongly to his mode of dress. Or lack thereof.

"I think that man Murray came back."

"He did?" I had no idea who Murray was.

"Yes, and the hot water heater isn't working again."

"Oh…" Now I understood. Sort of. Claude had told me that the hot water heater had broken last week, and when Hank Clearwater had come to fix it, Grandfather had gotten belligerent with him, accusing him of "trying to drown us all." Somehow he'd gotten his stories mixed up, blending bits and pieces of present and past in a way that wasn't real. Though I was sure it seemed real to him, which was frightening enough.

"How 'bout you pull yourself together and I'll come in for a hug?"

"He's not on our side."

"Hmm. Can you zip up your pants, there?"

He looked down and zipped his fly as far as it would go, which was far enough to be decent.

I brushed his uncombed hair from his shoulders, remarkably smooth, pale, and unblemished. "Let's get you tidied up." I took the spare elastic tie around my wrist and pulled his hair into a ponytail. There. "That oughta feel better, right?"

He nodded. "Better. Yes."

"Just let him be," Claude had told me last time. "What does it matter what he looks like out here in the middle of nowhere?"

"It matters to me," I'd said. "I'm uncomfortable around a man who shouldn't be naked in front of me." Claude had scoffed, but I'd pressed my point. "And besides, it's basic decorum to be dressed when you're entertaining friends and family." I'd wanted him to be comfortable, but it hadn't seemed right to let everything slide just because he'd lost awareness of social expectations. It's not the way he'd have wanted it.

"What would you like to do today?" I asked my grandfather.

He began to walk.

"Wait a minute. Let's tell Claude I'm here. Can you wait a minute?"

"Yes. I can wait a minute."

I climbed the back porch steps, only to find a note tacked to the door: _Sookie, gone out on errands. Claude._

Damn that Claude, leaving our grandfather alone. He'd known I would be coming, but what if I had gotten held up? How long had he been gone?

"Claude went out on errands," I said aloud.

"On errands," he parroted. He removed a coat from the porch railing and put it on over his bare skin. I realized it was a tuxedo jacket, and that his pants had satin stripes on the sides. Definitely an unusual daytime look, but one I couldn't quibble with.

He resumed walking and tripped on an old garden trowel that had been left out to rust. I picked it up, ran back to slip it under the porch railing, and returned to link my arm in his and guide him toward his workshop.

Great Grandfather's workshop was a modern structure that sat like a cube, tucked into a clearing at the edge of the woods. It was a beautiful space, with skylights and huge spans of windows and wood. On one wall, there was a fireplace, flanked by floor-to-ceiling cabinets. A large island occupied the middle of the room, where he did his work. A long, low, padded bench stretched on one whole side. Claudette used to stay here too, roaming freely most of the time.

"New girl," Claudette would say of me when I'd enter this space. "New-girl-new-girl-new-girl."

She was smart, that bird. Now I saw her cage, which Grandfather had insisted remain after she'd died, was gone. He hadn't even mentioned her today.

On impulse, I opened cabinets. He'd always kept this space clean, but today I noted that it had been completely emptied out. _Bugger, wouldn't that be just like Claude to sell his stuff to pocket the cash? _I gave myself a shake, reminding myself that medical bills were already mounting. My grandfather shouldn't be using his tools anyway. But… all of them?

I shook myself again. It did no good going over it now. Grandfather was looking more and more lost the longer we stood there. Even anchored to his workstation, gliding his hands over the burnished top, he still looked like he didn't belong in his own space. Without purpose. Maybe we could put something else out here for him to do. Exactly what, I didn't know. A needlepoint kit? Sketch pads and pencils? Clay? Jigsaw puzzles? I'd have to think on it and ask Claude for ideas, too.

"Let's go for a walk in the woods," I suggested.

He strode for the door.

The woods were Great Grandfather's playground, the inspiration for his work, and the place he went to unwind. For years, he tinkered on his land back there. Together, we'd often strolled the trails I'd come to know well too.

But today I was astounded.

"Wow," I said, at a loss for words. A large section of the forest had been…tidied. "It looks like you've done a lot of work here."

Next to me, my grandfather stooped to pick up a stray twig at my feet. It was one of only a handful of other twigs that lay strewn across the path in front of us. He gathered them one by one.

Apparently this was what he'd done with all of the other fallen branches in the forest. He'd collected them, snapped them into manageable pieces, and then used them to edge both sides of the paths. I watched as he neatly and precisely tucked the twigs he'd just picked up into the thick, rope-like bundles. They wound through the forest like twinned snakes.

Was it a labor of love? Boredom? A practical way to keep from getting lost? I didn't know. "Tell me about what you've been doing out here," I tried, but he merely toed the path.

I looked up again at the forest around us. Beyond my initial surprise, there was something unsettling here that I only began to understand as I took it all in, like one of those What's-Wrong-with-this-Picture puzzles that you get when you're a kid.

It was what he'd done to the trees.

From about as high as he could reach down to the ground, all of the branches had been removed. On the tree closest to me, I could see little stubs, some still green, from where they'd been snapped. Even as I stood there with him, he broke a twig by his shoulder that was starting to bud.

The effect was this: all of the forest around us had become a chilling space, full of rigid verticals, stiff upright columns with no natural messiness and flow. Barren and much too quiet. It hadn't simply been landscaped; it had been gutted. Overhead, the tree canopy, rustling with stray birds, covered us like a thin cap. Bizarrely, I thought of our 8th-grade science teacher, the toupee-wearing man Jason had called "Baldylocks." It wasn't funny—then or now—but now I had a new awareness that anything more than a gentle breeze would expose us.

This place was downright creepy.

And I really wanted my great grandfather to say something. Anything.

"All of these branches and twigs!" I said as I bent to neaten a section of edging, though it hardly needed it. "It must have taken you a long time."

He didn't acknowledge me and started walking. When he showed no signs of stopping, I trotted to catch up. Then, as he reached the far side of the trail loop, he stepped across the clear boundary marking the beginning of the unmanicured part of the forest. At once, I was frightened for him. So long as he stayed on his paths, I figured, he couldn't lose his way.

"Let's follow your trails," I suggested, even though I really didn't want to stay here. He'd spent days and days out here, probably without Claude's supervision. If I left his established paths with him, what would he do next time he was alone? "Could you tell me more about the types of trees in here?" I asked, hoping to distract him.

But he waved me off. "I want to show you a special place. It's magical." He strode ahead, sure-footed, off-trail. "Come with me. I know you'll follow."

He was already fifteen yards beyond of me, clambering over a fallen tree. And judging from his determined pace, I doubted he'd stop for anything short of being dragged home.

"All right," I called as grabbed for my phone to see that it was good and charged. "Wait up!"

vV\/vv\/Vv

"Watch it," Bill directed, holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the shine of my headlamp. We were in his skiff, patrolling the area of the bayou near Terry's house, looking for our gator.

Only moments ago, we watched the coiling trail of a cottonmouth, and now I was embarrassed to have the heebie-jeebies, jumping at the whine of every little mosquito in my ear and every rustle of undergrowth along the bank. The frogs were out in great force, stirring up such a steady racket they faded into the background. Here and there, we'd seen a gator, but nothing that looked big enough to be the one we were chasing.

It was as if the beast knew we were onto him. We had a lot of quiet time to fill as we sat and watched.

"I saw Victor's picture in the paper, out at the country club with his captured gator."

"Yes," Bill answered. "That didn't take him long."

"Now what?" I asked, feeling even more spooked as I thought of Victor prowling around us. All kinds of creatures go bump in the night on the bayou. "We can't keep sending him off on other high profile gators."

"No." Bill paused. "I suspect not." I could hear the grimness in his voice, even if I couldn't see the familiar hard set of his mouth. "But Victor has his hands in all kinds of trouble at the LDWF."

I thought about that for a moment. "Things he wouldn't want others to know about?"

Bill didn't answer.

"I don't think I like the sound of that." Suddenly I had the feeling that I was trailing a whole sequence of problems. That we were going after increasingly larger predators, when I'd be happy enough to keep the focus as low as I could on the food chain. How strange was my life that a massive gator ranked so low?

"I'll handle it. You needn't worry about it. I've only done some quiet checking around so far."

I was about to appeal to Bill's sensibilities—how his duck wing data belonged to the LDWF, not him—when I realized that was good enough reason to trust him. That whatever reasons Bill had for helping—whether it was to help me or get Victor or both—he wasn't going to jeopardize the career he'd struggled to build.

And who else was gonna sit with me in the middle of the bayou in the middle of the night to hunt for a monster illegally?

"All right," I said, rolling my neck and shoulders to release the tension, and I was placated enough to let this conversation drop for now.

We sat in silence for a few more moments before Bill asked the inevitable question, about how my great grandfather was doing. I told him about our trip into the woods and the way he'd "landscaped" it. I still got the willies thinking about it, especially sitting here in the dark.

But Bill had a different perspective. "Hmm," he mused. "That's interesting."

"What is?"

"Well, perhaps he's trying to tell you something. He's not _telling_ you directly, but he's _showing_ you. Like…installation art or…in this case it would be better to call it land art. I suppose since he was cleaning the forest in your presence, you could even say it was performance art."

"I get it," I said crossly. My great grandfather was the only artist in my family, and also apparently the only one who could appreciate art, a fact that Bill had made me painfully aware of when he'd taken Ms. Selah Pumphrey—not me—to the art museum in Baton Rouge.

"What do you think he wants you to know?" he asked, ignoring my irritation.

I swallowed hard. I hadn't told Bill about my grandfather's specific request. Hadn't voiced it out loud to anyone yet, nor was I ready to do so this evening. "He seemed most interested in showing me another part of his property," I said. Without telling Bill exactly what my grandfather had shown me, I went on to describe how he had guided me there without getting lost or looking confused once.

"That's interesting," he said again. "I know of people hanging onto memories for far longer than you'd expect, for those things that are…over-learned."

"Mm-hmm. That's just how it felt. It was like he went on instinct. And when it came time to go back, I made sure to let him take the lead. He guided us straight home. Though I think if I had asked him outright, 'Where's your house?' he would have gotten confused."

"Miss Caroline's late husband could play a good hand of Bridge almost up until the day he couldn't breathe. But if you'd have given him a math test, he'd have fared worse than a second grader."

I considered what that must have been like for him. "Do you think he knew?" I asked. "Was there a part of him that was aware of all he'd lost?"

Bill chuckled. "Of course we all joked that he wasn't about to let Miss Caroline have the last say. But as for whether he really knew…he had moments. Fleeting moments. As well as times when he was terrified without seeming to know why."

"That's awful," I said abruptly, the words coming from my gut and leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

"Yes. Yes, it was," Bill answered with equal candor.

"Like he couldn't…"

"…quit."

Old Mr. Bellefleur had reached the very end of bare functioning, hanging on until his brain couldn't even direct breathing. Great Grandfather would call that life lower than a reptile. He wouldn't want that particular ending for himself. He'd hate it.

I started to cry, angry that his fate could be so dependent on me. I even started to wish he'd taken matters into his own hands months ago.

"Sookie," Bill said quietly.

His tone was intent enough that I knew to look up, into the direction of his lamp.

The glowing red eyes of the alligator were visible. But he'd brought his head up too, massive.

"That's a dinosaur," Bill declared. "Surely big enough to eat a catahoula. A small child too."

I grabbed my rifle, never taking my eyes off him, and lined him up in my site. I was aiming for a quarter-size spot at the back of his skull. Anything else would be deflected off his bony plates.

"Little Debbie," I whispered.

"Excuse me?"

"That's what I'm calling him. Because after I've shot him, I'm going to cut him up in snack-size bites, roll him in cornmeal and spices, and fry him." And because that was the mood I was in.

"That's one big-ass hors d'oeuvre," Bill muttered, so out-of-character I put aside my rifle for a moment. I had to look at him sideways to avoid blinding him with my lamp. He was gazing out at our target, nodding his head.

"Aren't you gonna tell me that based on his size, that gator is likely a male and therefore Little Debbie isn't the best nickname?"

He shrugged. "No, because you just said so yourself."

I started to line him up again in my site, but Bill interrupted me once more. "Didn't you have a grill cook at one time named Debonair?"

"I don't think so. Maybe. We seem to go through them fast enough that I can't keep track."

I put my rifle up again.

"Little Debbie," he whispered.

"May I do this now?" I snapped, and he quieted. But I wasn't really angry. In fact, the little exchange with Bill had lopped off the worst of my anger, distracted me enough from the things that were really bothering me. A little anger is good. Too much gets in the way of good shooting.

I breathed. Here and there a breeze wafted, thick with the musky scent of our gator. The boat drifted and our heads bobbed, bouncing the light across the water. One shot. That's all I'd get. _Breathe. _Because after I fired my rifle, he'd go under deep. _Nearly there…nearly…at that space…where the gun, my target, and me lock in.._._one more…_

_Plink. _

He was gone.

Outta there.

Just…disappeared.

He'd slipped into his dark and watery world before I'd even had a chance to pull the trigger. I brought my gun down. "Where'd he go?"

Bill started to paddle. I grabbed the treble hook, a three-pronged hook attached to a line, and started tossing it out. I let the hook sink, and then when I thought it had sunk enough, I tugged it to try to snag him. It was hit or miss at best, given I didn't have a good idea which way he traveled or how deep. After a few tries I threw the whole thing in a heap on the bottom of our boat.

We sat, scanning the bayou with our lamps. I didn't hold my breath. Little Debbie could. Hold his breath, that is. Stay under for an hour or more. And he was probably smart enough to do just that.

For Pete's sake, why couldn't _something_ be easy for a change?

"Let's call it a night," I finally said. "Mosquitos are getting to me."

"Sweetheart." Bill reached up and flicked a switch to turn off my head lamp, and then removed it. It was a small improvement, at least.

I pulled out my ponytail, ran my fingers across my scalp, and refastened the elastic tie. "Sooner or later, I'll get him."

"I hope you do," he said quietly.

vV\/vv\/Vv

From up close, near the front, the Rest Easy Nursing Home can fool you of its stateliness.

Step away from the extra-wide door, cross the porch, and then you're down a gentle ramp and onto the cement sidewalk. From there, it's only a few steps across a measly strip of lawn to the road, curving and heavily-traveled. Its crosswalk, repainted every now and then for safety's sake, meets up with skidding cars as orderlies, nurses, and other staff dressed in patterned tops dart across. If you make it to the other side of the street—alive—to the parking lot, you can gain a better sense of the structure, with its blocky, red brick appendages sticking out from both sides. Stubby, the whole building appears to have stopped itself up short at the curb.

"It's not so bad," my friend, Amelia Broadway said in her upbeat tone, stroking one of four white fluted columns. She peered up, probably looking for birds' nests or cobwebs, or whatever other critters might lurk up there. Then she turned her attention downward. "Nice planters," she said of the gigantic Grecian-style urns, which overflowed with late-blooming spring bulbs and trailing greenery. "Those are expensive to maintain," she added, and I knew she was speaking as a property owner who had to pay for professional landscapers.

"You want me to ring the bell?" she asked, and suddenly I was second-guessing myself over why I was here.

"Just a minute," I said, pausing to remind myself that I hadn't yet been able to find a way to help my great grandfather as he'd asked of me. Helping someone die, it's not like trying to find a good recipe for a chocolate cake. Or teaching yourself how to caulk your tub. But aside from that, I'd felt like I'd needed to look into alternatives too. Amelia had heard through the grapevine about my grandfather's illness; when she'd offered to introduce me to a nursing home director who was a business associate of her father's, I'd accepted.

Next to me, Amelia shifted her purse. "All right," I said, leaning forward to ring the bell. After all, I wasn't doing anything difficult today, like committing my great grandfather to someone else's care. Just...doing a little information-gathering. Due diligence. A petite woman wearing a nametag identifying herself as "Melanie" opened the door.

"Good morning and welcome to Rest Easy!" she said, glancing at her clipboard. "I'm guessing you are Sookie Stackhouse and Amelia Broadway?"

"That's us!" Amelia answered, as though Melanie had won the Grand Prize. "I'm Amelia and this is Sookie. We were referred by my father, Copley Carmichael."

Melanie's eyes skipped over me as though I were invisible before landing on Amelia. I didn't think it had anything to do with Amelia's connections, but Amelia apparently did. She stood up a bit straighter and flashed one of her perkiest smiles.

"We don't get too many visitors at this time of the day," Melanie said. "And I knew you weren't the leader of the Wolf Cub Scout den." She winked.

Amelia sniggered, as though she'd already been let in on an inside joke.

"They won't last long."

"Oh?" Amelia prodded.

Melanie waved her hand. "They're cute little buggers, eager to play board games and so on." We passed through another set of doors leading into a small lobby. There was the requisite seating arrangement, table, magazine/brochure display, and potted plant, along with an empty alcove for parking wheelchairs and electric scooters. "But if they're in it just for the badges," she continued, laughing in a way that verged on a cackle. "Let's just say our residents aren't easily fooled." She shrugged, "But if Mr. Herveaux wants to give it a try…"

"A fine morning to you, ladies!" a man named Rasul called to us from behind a reception desk .

"Good morning!" Amelia answered, wandering closer to him.

"Our front desk is staffed 24-7, and all visitors are required to sign in." Melanie waved her clipboard. "But I got you this time."

"Next time, then," Rasul assured us. His eyes lingered over me longer than necessary, though he wasn't staring. I'd call him curious, as opposed to the type like Melanie who can't meet my eyes without a nervous shift.

I gave him a wave and a thank you as he buzzed us through the next set of double doors, which led right past a large lounge/activity room. With a quick glance, I could see a few tables and seating areas arranged with plenty of space for wheelchairs and walkers. Melanie would have led us straight to our meeting—"The director will bring you back to see this room," she said—but I stopped, surprised to find not one, but two of Gran's friends.

"Good morning, Mr. Norris!" I said to the man wandering toward me and whistling an aimless tune. He smiled, nodded his head, got within five feet of me as though he was going to start a conversation, but then abruptly switched directions. He looked like he had a plan as he headed to the bulletin board, but once he got there, he turned around and set off in another direction, bouncing around the room like a happy, lazy pool ball.

Gran's other friend, Mrs. Velda Cannon, was having a much worse day. Her hair was wild—combed, but frizzy and unstyled—a sad reminder of her, my gran, and Everlee Mason with their beauty parlor hairdos and matching shoes and pocketbooks, gathered outside the church on a Sunday afternoon, fanning themselves with bulletins and planning their annual strawberry festival.

Today, Mrs. Cannon squirmed and swatted at her wheelchair as a boulder-of-a-man named Bert wiped it and said, "It's all gone now. See?"

She wailed in a voice too weak to work up any real oomph.

"Mrs. Cannon?" As I approached her, I watched for any sign of recognition in her eyes. She was utterly frightened, though not of me. Pushing at her chair, she was trying to escape from it with arms that weren't strong enough to hold her own weight.

"Are you a friend?" Bert asked.

He had a scar on his face too, slicing diagonally across his cheek. Amelia would later describe him as "tough," on account of his "hard as bricks muscles."

I nodded at Bert and bent to get closer to Mrs. Cannon. "Mrs. Cannon?" I tried again.

She still hadn't acknowledged me, and I felt like I was speaking to the air, but I thought that doing anything less than trying to carry on a conversation with her would be dishonoring her. "Mrs. Cannon, I'm Sookie, Adele's granddaughter."

She looked up in a beseeching manner, though still without any recognition. "They're back," she cried, swiping at her chair.

"Spiders," Bert explained. "She thinks they're crawling up her chair, spinning webs."

I wanted to ask if she was like this always, but somehow it felt too personal. And anyway, I could see she was tormented. If ever the word _tormented _applied, it was to Mrs. Cannon, trapped in a bizarre dream-like world without the mental framework to find her way out. Her disease had taken too much of her.

Reluctantly, I left her to take the grand tour, led for us by the director, a woman named Sophie-Anne LeClerq, who seemed young enough to work here as a summer camp counselor, leading residents through rounds of banana Bingo and wheelchair aerobics. But Sophie-Anne was ethereally elegant in a white pantsuit and a blood-red, beaded necklace. She spoke in a calm, steady tone that conveyed maturity. And no tolerance for nonsense. I had a feeling she ran a tight ship.

As we took the tour, I was vaguely aware of the rhythm of the conversation: Amelia's blithe chattering followed by Sophie-Anne's professional, tamed and tethered responses. Here and there I broke in with a question. There was nothing stellar or wrong about the place—aside from the outrageous price tag—but all along, I couldn't shake the image of a frightened Mrs. Cannon. Before we left, I stopped by the front desk.

"I wonder if I could trouble you for something," I asked Rasul.

He raised an eyebrow. "And what might that be, sweet woman?"

"It's Sookie." I offered him a handshake. "Masking tape?"

With a smoothness worthy of note, Rasul reached into his drawer.

"Thank you, kindly," I reached for the roll on his extended palm. He held onto it for one second longer than he needed to.

"Don't get into any trouble with that," he said.

I made a cross-my-heart motion, which drew his eyes downward.

Amelia followed me into the lounge area, where a limp Mrs. Cannon was now moaning, as though she'd run out of steam to let anyone know how frightened she still was. Basically, she'd just given up. For a moment, I saw the spiders too, wrapping their layers of silken threads around her until she'd be fully bound. And then they'd bite.

I shook myself and squatted in front of Mrs. Cannon, not without another look from Bert.

"Mrs. Cannon," I tried again, "I'm Sookie, Adele Stackhouse's granddaughter." My words weren't registering any better than they had earlier, but I seemed to be distracting her well enough. "I was thinking about the day we all went for a ride to tour the battlefields and Civil War museum." As I talked, I wound the tape around the shiny reflective parts of her wheelchair that she'd been batting at. I took care to wrap it smoothly, so there was no gape or bump. "We had a lot of fun that day. I still have a picture of you, my gran, Everlee Mason, and Maxine Fortenberry in front of General Lee's statue."

Her eyes were riveted on my hair.

"She gets ahold of your hair, you won't like it none," Bert warned.

I took his words to heart and pulled back. She settled for a moment. Another hulking man, also named Bert—which made me do a double take—joined us. We all waited. I prayed the tape would ease her agitation.

"Looks like they're showing the movie Field of Dreams," Amelia noted.

One of the Berts grunted.

"And tomorrow night a speaker is coming in to talk about baseball. Grilled hotdogs for dinner."

I looked around the room. There were a few folks in wheelchairs parked out of the main line of traffic, in places that gave them a decent view of things. Notably absent was a TV. At one table, a group of residents were using sewing cards. One person was working on a jigsaw puzzle with large pieces. There were two easels ready for use, though neither of them had any takers. And on one of the sofas, a man and woman sat snuggled against each other. He'd wrapped his arm around her as she leaned her head against his chest and played with his shirt buttons.

And then just like that, Mrs. Cannon began wriggling again, panic wilding her eyes. I wanted to give her a hug and tell her everything was okay, but I'd only scare her more. Not to mention the fact that everything was _not _okay.

"Is there anything that will help calm her?"

"Drugs," one of the Berts answered.

"Will you give her something?" Whatever that "something" was, I didn't want her to suffer any more.

"After I take off this tape," Bert answered, annoyed.

I took the roll back to Rasul and traded it for a couple of tissues.

"You're breaking my heart." He patted at his chest.

I swiped at my wet cheeks. _Stupid._ It was stupid to think there'd be an easy fix. Though maybe she'd take to a plush toy, like a teddy bear or a stuffed cat. Trading dignity for comfort would be okay in this case. Anything to ease the torment. Or even…

"May I bring my cat to visit?" I asked Rasul.

"We have a pet program," he answered.

Amelia nodded knowingly and chattered on about the non-profit group she'd heard about that pairs abandoned pets with nursing homes. It gave me time to take another look around the room with its carefully-positioned furniture, low-pile rug—light green with a tan border—tall windows, and framed photographs of the bayou. Cypress Trees at Sunset. Water Hyacinth with Dragonfly. Fisherman's Bounty.

"There was no harm in trying the tape." Amelia patted me on the arm. She was right, but I didn't want to hear it in her uber-cheerful voice, from someone who'd never had to struggle for anything. She'd always had one cushion or another—connections, money, a dad to swoop in and fix things. Picking yourself up from a blow is a lot easier when you don't have to start from scratch, dirt-poor.

"Poor Pitiful Pearl," my Gran would tell me if she were here.

She was right about that-it does no good wallowing in self pity. _And_ I wasn't being fair to Amelia.

But some days are harder than others.

vV\/vv\/Vv

"I know someone," Eric said in his quiet, simple tone.

We were sitting in his kitchen, the homiest room in his house, the only one that hadn't been decorated to high heaven. He hadn't bothered with it, owing to the fact that he was a terrible cook. He hadn't cared to try. But he could make the best cup of coffee ever. He drank it all the time to keep himself away from other beverages of choice.

I grasped my mug, which was now cold. For nearly an hour, I'd told Eric about my great grandfather and his terrible decline. Until now, I'd kept the details of his disease to myself, out of respect for his privacy, but today they spilled out. Watching a loved one suffer, beginning to lose himself and become that _thing_ that had taken over…it had become too much to deal with on my own.

"She's a physician in Houma," Eric prompted.

"I'm sorry?" I looked up from the pattern of scratches on his countertop. Slices running like hashtags.

"Dr. Amy Ludwig," Eric said.

"Alzheimer's is her specialty?"

There was a significant pause. "She's willing to work outside the bounds."

"Oh!" I flinched, and the crowded thoughts in my head suddenly blanked.

Eric waited. I felt my face flush and my throat tighten, and when I didn't speak—couldn't—he said, "It's what he asked, yes?"

I nodded, reminded of the descent of my Google search. _Alzheimer's stages. Alzheimer's cause of death._ _Palliative care. Death with dignity. Assisted suicide. Euthanasia. _And eventually on to the "How to" manuals.I'd written off a few options I'd learned about because I figured there'd be no way I could reasonably help my great grandfather carry them out. And others…they were unspeakable.

"I tried," I said, when I found my voice. "I mean, I started to look into it and…well, there aren't many good options. It's not like I can move him to Oregon where it's legal." Technically, though, it probably wouldn't even be legal there.

"Right." He crumpled a napkin and tossed it into the trash. "Dr. Ludwig can help him." He stood to pour himself another cup.

Numbly, I nodded again.

"Sookie?" Now he was holding the pot up to me.

I didn't want more, but pushed my cup toward him and watched curiously as he went about the motions in his kitchen, topping it off, stopping when I held up my hand, and adding the rest to his cup, right up to the brim. He let it sit there while he emptied the basket of his coffee maker and lined it with a new filter. "She'll procure the drugs for you and tell you how to use them," he said as he added heap after heap of coffee he'd ground earlier this morning.

Then he rejoined me, sitting at the barstool next to mine. From here, we could see his back yard, sloping down to a fence, which remained unlocked and sometimes even half open. I wondered how often he and his neighbors had trouble with gators straying from the man-made pond fifty yards away. The Super Green lawn that extended right up to the edge of the water had no good bare patches for a muddy slide. No tall, errant weeds for hiding. But plenty of dogs for the taking. Their owners walked them along the surrounding path and sat, on cooler days, beneath young trees that cast only wisps of shadows.

"I thought I had her number. It should be here," he said, irritated as he swiped and tapped his phone.

"Hmm." I said.

_No swimming, _the signs reminded. The warnings were posted on bronze metal plaques spaced evenly around the pond.

"I'll have to get it for you later." He set his phone on the counter, shoved it away, and then stopped to look at me.

Aside from a little glitch in obtaining a phone number, this matter was already settled for Eric. I thought for a moment about how nice it must be inside his head, his thoughts all neat and orderly and tidy. Resolved.

"Sookie," he prompted.

I had an urge to touch him, to put my hands on his smooth cheeks. I reached out. If Eric thought my gesture was odd, he didn't show it, holding completely still and silent. Within myself, Velda Cannon and Reverend Collins were at war with each other, pulling me in two different directions. Velda suffering her dark endless passages strung with sticky webs and spiders. The Reverend preaching his messages of the sanctity of life and Thou Shalt Not Kill.

I slid my hands down to Eric's solid shoulders, a good place for gripping him. My fingers pressed, digging into muscle, following the band above his collar bone. His tee was soft and thin enough that I felt the warmth of his skin through the fabric. I worked all the way to the edge of his shoulders and down his upper arms to slip beneath his sleeves, where I stroked.

But it never came, that sense of resolution and peace I'd been looking for.

And then the tears flowed again. I'd already cried through a heap of tissues today—all of them, in fact. Eric panicked as he realized the box on the counter was empty. Without that fallback, he grabbed the rim of my barstool to tug me closer, snugged up against his seat as close as they'd go. The metal feet clattered and vibrated across the tile floor in a jarring way, and I had to open my legs wide to accommodate the position.

"He's family," I cried, leaning my head into his chest. "I don't want to have to let him go."

There. I'd said the selfish thing: that I wanted to hold onto whatever inkling of him I could have, even though I didn't want to see him suffer.

Eric's arms circled around me. I felt the weight of them, holding me close to him, and the light brush of his thumbs, stroking patterns on my back. Circles and zig zags. Under his lovely silence, I could hear my own breathing, harsh but even as I felt my loved ones drawing out of me. Claudine. Cousin Hadley. Gran. Aunt Linda. Grandpa Mitchell. My mother. My father.

I rubbed my hands along the ridge of his thigh muscles. Claudine. Hadley. Gran…What's gone is gone.

I pushed out one last forceful breath and then quieted. Eric released me from his arms and slipped his hand under my chin, tilting my face toward his. After a moment of steady gazing, his mouth came to mine with a gentle kiss, with lips so soft they nearly retreated. Before long I found myself pressing my mouth against his more insistently, working my fingers along his worn denim, until finally, I felt the thrust of his tongue.

"Sookie," he said, throaty, as he pulled back.

My heart pounding and my head swimming, I opened my eyes. His hand came to my cheek, thumb stroking, as the strong, proud features of his face came into focus. "I love you," he said.

Through tears, I gave him one of my grins, lopsided as always, but real and uncontainable at this moment. He caught me fake smiling once or twice and told me his bullshit meter was going off. But now he grinned back and came in for another kiss with even more energy. His hands slid beneath the waistband of my jeans and under the band of my bra. When he stood and shoved his barstool behind him, I knew that whatever would come next, it would be creative and energetic and wholly satisfying. Something that would give me a cramped thigh and involve at least three rooms in the house. And probably that fur throw on his bed.

"Bring it," I said as my grin changed in tenor.

From there, it was quick work ridding ourselves of pesky clothes. Our focus was so single-minded that only afterward did we notice we'd both missed phone calls.

On his phone and mine too were a string of messages. All from Andy Bellefleur of the Bon Temps police department.


End file.
